People were upset to be woken up by the Amber Alert Thursday night. And now, on social media, people are REALLY upset that people were upset to be woken up by the Amber Alert. This is trending: But, instead, we need a #believethem movement to trend for whenever a parent
Continue readingAuthor: Marie Snyder
A Puff of Absurdity: On Fake News and Russian Collusion
In a recent interview in AcTIVism, Glenn Greenwald, one of few people Edward Snowden agreed to speak to, shamed other countries that benefited from Snowden’s revelations but refused to grant him safe passage. Because of Snowden, many are taking means to protect their personal privacy online, but his revelations had
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Cost of Inequality: Davis 2019
This is a great video of some excellent speakers to listen to while you make dinner or, maybe, do your taxes. In a nutshell, governments need to stop taking out social programs since they cost so little of the GDP anyway, and they need to make sure the wealthy pay
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Kids These Days!
Here’s Greta Thunberg, 16, at Davos 2019, the World Economic Forum: At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed. All political movements in their present form
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the Covington Catholic School Incident
The best part of this issue, if there can be a good part, where a bunch of high school boys surrounded Nathan Phillips to get a little kick from exercising their power over another human being, is that they’re being skewered on social media. Their action has precedence. It’s easy
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: 10 Year Challenge
I posted this challenge on social media recently. This is what we do to be sociable: play online games and forward memes. Discussing the world and screaming into the void to try to shift this tragic path is such a loser thing to do. It’s a balance to stay just
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: We Still Have Agency Around Climate Change
There’s one seed left. The Agenda talked with Michael Mann and a few others in the field about “Burnout and Despair: Studying the Climate” Mann focused on the many ways we can reduce our carbon footprint, and said, “Every bit of fossil fuels that we don’t burn . . makes the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Why Protest?
This will be the shortest post ever! Here’s my argument delineated in premises and a conclusion (P=premise, SC=sub-conclusion, C=conclusion): P1. Human beings are wired for immediate, or short-term, survival, not long term survival. (Or, as Plato said, we are weak at the skill of measurement.) That’s why we do many
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Continuums: ASD, OCD, ADHD, Alzheimers, and Allergies
Since the Aspergers designation was excluded from the DSM V, many people were, and are, outraged that all cases fall under the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) instead of the separate categories of Autism and Aspergers. There is a world of difference between someone who has some mild problems understanding social
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Evaluating Teachers and Edu-Speak
I just went through the final teacher evaluation of my career, since we are evaluated every five years, and I don’t expect to do this for more than another four. I hope I pass!! I’ve said before that the process has room for improvement. I think teachers within the department
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Fridays for Future
I went to the first #fridaysforfuture protest in our area with my youngest, yesterday, outside my MP’s office. The idea is the brainchild of Greta Thunberg who wants all students to strike every Friday until the political system focuses on slowing down climate change so we can avoid hitting that
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Energy Conservation in the Home: I’ll Show You Mine…
I know this is just one tiny piece of the puzzle, but there IS an effective way to get people to reduce their energy usage in their homes: publicize how much their neighbours use. A recent study found that if people think they’re neighbours care about the environment, and if
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Gertz’s Nihilism and Technology
I really love this book. First of all, the chapter headings and sub-headings are all clever little in jokes, like “Beyond Google and Evil,” that make anyone with a cursory knowledge of Nietzsche feel like part of the gang. But it’s not just looking at tech through the lens of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Taxing the Rich
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshest Democrat to hit the White House, is making headlines for mimicking the dance sequence from The Breakfast Club back in college, and wanting to raise marginal tax rates to 70%. Unfortunately people care a bit too much about her dance moves, and headlines are missing the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Coddling Our Kids
The Agenda has a video with Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist. I watched it with my kids, and we had a good discussion about it. Haidt published a book, The Coddling of the American Mind, with Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a few months
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Capitalism’s Limitations
Every year, when we get to the part of my philosophy course where we read some Marx & Engels, and I ask for criticisms of the reading, like I do with every other political philosopher we read, instead of thinking and devising astute observations, there’s always a few who are
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Arguing Facts
It never ceases to amaze me how often I’ll be writing or thinking about something, and then the perfect articles drop in my lap. It might help that I’ve been scrolling through social media endlessly on my days off! In my prior post, I discussed the need for teachers to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Place of Teachers in this Mess
Once, about twenty years ago, when I was talking about teaching both sides of the climate change debate in the classroom, a colleague told me, “There’s just one side; the right side.” I admired her chutzpa, but I silently disagreed. We have to raise both sides and scrutinize them both
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Courage Over Hope
This got a little out of control, so I added in pictures! But there is suddenly tons in the news about climate change, and many excellent videos to watch. Jeremy Deaton wrote in the Huffington Post last week: Ultimately, the idea that regular people can’t be told the full implications of climate
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Ontario’s Education: Call for Ideas
Today’s the last chance to tell Rob Ford and the Minister of Education, Lisa Thompson, what we should do with the educational system. As if it matters. At least it presents the illusion of being heard. People revolt less if they have a chance to speak to the political elites.
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